Find Employees: The Ultimate Guide to Maximising Applicant Attraction

<div class="grey-callout"><h2>Key Takeaways</h2><ul>
<li>Active and passive applicants: Use different strategies for each, such as job adverts for active and referrals/headhunting for passive candidates.</li>
<li>Multiple channels: Use various Applicant Attraction Channels to speed up recruitment and improve candidate benchmarking.</li>
<li>Direct hiring: Promote jobs internally, utilise an employer career page and employee referal scheme, and advertise on social media and job sites before considering agencies.</li>
<li>Tailor strategies: Adjust approaches for recurring, time-sensitive, confidential, and specialised roles.</li>
</ul></div>

In this article, I cover how to attract enough applicants to increase your chance of filling a job vacancy. You’ll discover the pros and cons of various Applicant Attraction Channels. I will also explain the trade-offs between the time needed to find and shortlist candidates, the monetary cost, and how long it takes to fill a job. There’s no perfect one-size-fits-all solution – be wary of anyone who claims otherwise!

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Two Types of Applicants

1. Active applicants: Are actively engaged in finding a job. They might be unemployed or employed, and they’re easier to find and hire.
2. Passive applicants: Whilst they aren’t actively looking for a new job, they’re open to discussing new opportunities. They are harder to find, making them more challenging to recruit.

Both types of applicants could be suitable for your jobs, but their motivations have implications for:

• Recruitment strategies: How you attract active and passive applicants is different. For example, active applicants can be attracted through job advertising, while passive applicants could be identified via employee referrals and headhunting.
• Engagement: Active applicants are often more responsive because they’re motivated to secure a new job and will sell themselves. In contrast, passive applicants expect an employer to sell the value of a new opportunity to them, changing the bargaining power.
• Selection process: Recruitment is rarely easy, and with passive applicants you’ll need to be more flexible, put in more effort, and offer a higher salary.

You may think, “Passive applicants seem like an expensive hassle, I’ll stick with active applicants”. Whilst this is a strategy most employers adopt, if the number of active applicants is limited, passive applicants might be your only option.

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Use Multiple Applicant Attraction Channels

A SECRET of great recruitment is to use multiple Applicant Attraction Channels simultaneously. Doing so:

• Helps benchmark applicants: More applicants mean you can make more informed decisions about whether your expectations are realistic.
• Speeds up recruitment: Advertising across multiple channels at the same time increases the speed of filling a job. I sometimes see an employer advertise a job on a single job site, but they want to see more applicants; so they try another site, and the same thing happens. All the while, applicants from the first job advert have accepted competing job offers, and the vacancy remains unfilled longer than it has to. Speed is so important in recruitment because the “war for talent” is often won by a “race for talent”.
• Increased chance of filling a job: With more applicants and a faster recruitment process, you have a significantly better chance of filling a job. The sooner a job is filled, the sooner you can get back to your day job and a new employee can deliver value to the business.

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Use the Correct Order of Applicant Attraction Channels

Whilst you must use multiple Applicant Attraction Channels, the order you use them in is very important.

I recommend beginning with employee referrals because they are slow to deliver results, so get the ball rolling early

Most small businesses don’t have an employer career page (and I wouldn’t recommend you get one), but if you already have one, it makes sense to advertise the job there as it costs almost nothing, and you might get lucky.

At the same time, advertise the vacancy on job sites or via a recruitment advertising agency (aka flat-fee recruiter). Both are quick and relatively cheap sources of applicants.

Next, promote your job advert using social media recruiting method and provide links to your job advert so jobseekers can easily learn more and apply. Additionally, ask employees to share a link to the job advert on their social media profiles (a form of employee advocacy). 

For senior and specialist roles, consider using LinkedIn for recruitment.

The direct hiring methods above are suitable for many employers with the internal capability and capacity. However, not every employer has the time, inclination, and expertise. Or they may have a very specialist or confidential role. In these instances, if affordable, outsource to a recruitment agency. There are three types of recruitment agency – contingency, retained, and executive search – and you need to choose the best for your circumstance.

If using direct hiring methods in conjunction with a recruitment agency, it is important to use direct hiring methods first because:

1. Contingency recruitment agencies often use the same job sites as employers, accessing the same pool of applicants. If an agency submits a candidate’s CV, and you later find the exact same candidate through a job site, you could pay both the recruitment agency and the job site. This common oversight is a costly mistake!
2. Jobseekers may prefer to apply directly, valuing the control it gives them over their application process – additionally, some distrust recruitment agencies due to a poor experience or general bad reputation.

Another popular outsourcing solution is to use a recruitment advisor or HR consultant. They can provide commercial advice and practical help with direct hiring methods, making them an affordable solution for organisations with a persistent hiring requirement

There are other less widely used Applicant Attract Channels that may be appropriate.

An organisation may wish to create high-quality recruitment blog content to attract active and passive applicants. Whilst it can be slow and sporadic, when used on an already popular website it may be an effective long-term recruitment strategy.

Advertising with the Jobcentre may help you find applicants for blue-collar workers. But don’t be fooled by the free job advertising; the hidden cost is the time you waste with irrelevant applicants

Job and Career Fairs may be suitable if you have a significant and immediate hiring requirement.

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Common Exceptions

The main exceptions to this order of Applicant Attraction Channels are in the following situations:

• Recurring roles: If you regularly recruit replacement staff, I recommend continually advertising because you’re under less pressure when an employee leaves. But jobseekers might recognise your high staff turnover and stop applying, so advertise anonymously with varying advert copy.
• Time-sensitive roles: I recommend direct hiring techniques for a week and then outsourcing to a recruitment agency.
• Confidential roles: Use anonymous job adverts on job sites or use a retained/executive search recruitment agency, recruitment advisor or HR consultant.
• General retail and hospitality roles: Start with a “Help Wanted” advert in a shop window with a clear call-to-action and contact details about how to apply. Be careful not to damage your consumer brand though; I’ve seen restaurants advertising for chefs with “No experience required”, which as a potential customer makes me want to find somewhere else to eat!

Avoid These Applicant Attraction Channels

It’s also worth mentioning what I recommend avoiding:

• Newspapers and industry magazines: Printed media has lost out to the internet. A few publishers have managed to cling on because of their reputations, and many have set up job sites. But it’s one thing to write great editorial content and quite another to run a successful job site.
• Games: You’ve probably seen MI5 and the armed forces create elaborate games to attract and assess applicants. These are often dreamt up by recruitment advertising agencies trying to reinvent themselves and win creative awards. They generate a lot of press but lead to few new employees because single-player games with a known endpoint don’t help identify team players who are good at activities with uncertain outcomes. And while the “winners” may be brilliant in one field, they may not have the skills needed for another.
• PR: Recruitment is about filling jobs, not developing brands or inflating egos. While this technique may work for big brands (Race, 2021), most SMEs don’t have a newsworthy brand.
• Videos and podcasts: They often spotlight an individual as a thought leader rather than showcasing a company as an attractive employer. Consistently creating content is challenging and time-consuming, better suited for those with a knack for presenting rather than recruiting. When pitched these services, notice that examples often feature large companies with significant budgets, or are unrelated to recruitment, gaining attention for humour rather than effectiveness (eg. Old Spice or Dollar Shave Club adverts on YouTube).
• Live video events: Engagement is low because jobseekers have busy diaries and want to maintain anonymity in case their current employer finds out.

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There are Necessary Trade-Offs

Just as different cars suit different clientele, different Applicant Attraction Channels suit different businesses. Here are some essential points to be aware of:

• More money increases your options: Strong cash flow is a luxury many companies don’t have. If you are happy to spend money, you can afford more expensive options such as recruitment agencies, recruitment advisors and HR consultancies.
• More money saves you time: If you can afford recruitment agencies and similar services, they will do the routine work for you, freeing you up to concentrate on your business and potentially increase your earnings.
• More recruitment experience increases your options: As with many aspects of life, more experience makes even complex tasks manageable. A greater familiarity with advertising jobs and shortlisting applicants will mean you’ll find direct hiring easier, giving you more options.
• More patience increases your options: I’ve witnessed some hiring managers get irate with irrelevant applicants, applicants failing to return calls, candidates not arriving for interviews, etc. They are overwhelmed and have so much on their plate that a minor issue becomes the last straw. If you’re of a similar disposition, delegate the task to someone else or outsource.
• Specialist jobs reduce your options: Not only will you need to use more Applicant Attraction Channels, but you’ll likely need to use retained/executive search recruitment agencies to find passive applicants.
• Urgent jobs reduce your options: Some Applicant Attraction Channels are too slow and unpredictable, such as employee referrals, employer career pages and recruitment blogs. So, to attract active jobseekers quickly, use a job site or recruitment advertising agency; or a recruitment agency, recruitment advisor or HR consultancy.
• Confidential jobs reduce your options: If you don’t want to broadcast to everyone that you’re hiring, you’ll want to either advertise anonymously on job sites, or use a recruitment advisor or HR consultancy.

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Additional Resources

• ‍Recruitment Book: The Secrets of Great Recruitment - How to Recruitment Great Employees.
• Downloadable PDF guide; Fill Your Jobs Fast: Use Multiple Channels to Attract Great Performers.
• Article; Use Multiple Applicant Attraction Channels to Attract Great Candidates.
• Article; Recruitment Metrics: Why They're Largely a Waste of Time.